NAPOLEON’S PRIVATES

A picked Napoleon’s Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped off a bookstore shelf as a gift for his uncle last Christmas, and when he brought it home, I noticed that it was by Tony Perrottet, whose publicist I interned for back in college. The agency wasn’t actively working with him at the time, but I got a free copy of his book of travel essays, Off the Deep End, which I remember enjoying, so it was goodwill/nostalgia plus the promise of naughty historical factoids that prompted me to check this out of the library. And it was a fun read, intermittently fascinating (the titular organ, if it is in fact authentic, currently resides in a suitcase under a bed in New Jersey) and forgettable (I knew some of the stuff already; the assortment of topics was uneven and seemed random at times). It’s worth a browse—the easy-reference charts, such as “Where Are They Now? Celebrity Body Parts” and “How Wretched Were the Impressionists?”, were particularly amusing—and will correct those misguided souls who think history is boring, but anyone who’s already up on their offbeat anecdotes might get impatient reading it all the way through.